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    All Featured Books
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  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
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    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with california

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Earth Optimism 2020, User Stories

Meadowfoam and Cluster-Lilies: Empowering Research on Rare Plants Through Open Access to Biodiversity Literature

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Little Lake Valley, located in northern California’s Eel River watershed, is home to several thousand acres of wet meadows and riparian woodlands that are habitat for diverse plants and wildlife, including tule elk, many bird species, and gorgeous spring wildflower displays. A landscape formed when sediments from several creeks filled an intermountain valley bounded by faults, the Valley is also home to two rare plants: the North Coast semaphore grass (state-listed as Threatened) and Baker’s meadowfoam (state-listed as Rare).

“The large lowland wetland ecosystem found in the Little Lake Valley, if not unique, is quite rare,” asserts Dr. Robert E. Preston, a Senior Biologist in the Sacramento office of ICF, an international consulting firm. “Most or all of the small interior valleys of California’s North Coast Ranges were long ago converted to agriculture or were hydrologically altered. Moreover, it supports almost half of the known occurrences of Baker’s meadowfoam, including the largest and most extensive population.”

In November 2016, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) completed construction of the Willits Bypass Project, a 5.9-mile long bypass of US Highway 101 in Mendocino County. First proposed in 1957, the controversial project, which crosses a corner of Little Lake Valley, raised a variety of environmental concerns due to its impact on endangered species and state and federally regulated resources [1].

Preston served as the lead botanist for the team that prepared the Project’s Mitigation and Monitoring Plan, which was developed and is being implemented by Caltrans to offset the bypass’ impacts on wetlands and rare plants.

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August 27, 2020byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Decoding Palms: Deciphering Plant Mysteries One Publication at a Time

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Given their strong association with the area, you might be surprised to learn that there is only one species of palm native to the entire state of California — the California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera), native to the southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. It is one of two recognized species in the genus Washingtonia, the other being the Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta), native to western Sonora and Baja California Sur in northwestern Mexico. Both are among the palm tree species found in L.A., with the Mexican fan palm in particular reaching exceptional heights throughout the city.

Dr. Lorena Villanueva-Almanza, outreach coordinator at the California Botanical Society, specializes in the Washingtonia genus. As a plant taxonomist, her work focuses on understanding plant relationships and the many ways and names under which plants have been described across time — something she is currently engaged in for the Washingtonia. BHL is an invaluable resource for this work.

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August 13, 2020byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Seals? Seal Lions? Walruses? Do you know your fin-footed mammals?

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On a trip in the fall of 2012 to San Francisco to attend the Internet Archives’ Leaders’ Forum, a couple of us paid a visit to Pier 39 to visit the semi-aquatic mammals that hang out there.Since January 1990, these colorful creatures have been “hauling up” at Pier 39. At first considered a bit of a nuisance (they can be a bit loud and smelly), they soon turned into a beloved tourist attraction. See more about their story on the Pier 39 site.But what exactly are these creatures? Well, three families make up the group of fin footed mammals of the order, Pinnipedia: Odobenidae (the walrus), Otariidae (eared seals, sea lions, and fur seals), and Phocidae (earless seals).
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April 11, 2013byMartin R. Kalfatovic
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Conservation, Alaska, and John Muir

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“I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer…I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.” – John Muir
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November 29, 2012byGrace Costantino

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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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